The Flying Legion Part 45

The Master nodded.

"It shall be as thou wishest," said he. "Think, yes. And understand that what I do is best for all of Sunnite Islam! As for the s.h.i.+ah dogs, what hast thou to trouble about them?"

Saying no more, he withdrew to his own cabin, wrapped the Myzab and the Stone in the blanket and laid them carefully under his berth.

Opening his desk-drawer, he a.s.sured himself the Pearl Star was still there. This done, he turned again to the map, carefully studied the location of the point Rrisa had designated, and--going to the pilot-house--gave directions for a new course to "Captain Alden," now at the wheel.

This course, he calculated by allowing for wind and lateral drift, would carry _Nissr_ directly toward the site of the still half-mythical Iron Mountains and the Bara Jannati Shahr.

He now returned to his cabin, locked himself in and--pondering over a few khat leaves--pa.s.sed the remainder of the afternoon sunk in deep abstraction.

Evening and night still found him in profound thought, while the giant air-liner steadily rushed into the south-east, bearing him and the Legion onward toward dim regions now veiled in purple darkness under strange stars.

At nine o'clock he ordered _Nissr_ stopped, and had the body of Dr.

Lombardo sent down with six men in the nacelle, for burial. No purpose could be served by keeping the body, and all unnecessary complications had to be dispensed with before the morrow. Lombardo, who had fully atoned for his fault by having given his life in the service of the now depleted Legion, was buried in his service-uniform, in a fairly deep grave on which the Legionaries heaped a great tumulus of sand.

The only witnesses were the Arabian Desert stars; the only requiem the droning of the helicopters far above, where _Nissr_ hung with her gleaming lights like other, nearer stars in the dense black sky.

By ten o'clock, the air-liner had resumed her course, leaving still another brave man to his last sleep, alone. The routine of travel settled down again on the s.h.i.+p and its crew of adventurers.

At half-past eleven, the Master issued from his cabin. All alone, and speaking with no man, he took a quarter-hour const.i.tutional up and down the narrow gallery along the side of the fuselage--the gallery on which his cabin window opened. His face, by the vague light of the glows in this gallery, looked pale and worn; but a certain gleam of triumph and proud joy was visible in his dark eyes.

All about him, stretched night unbroken. Far behind, lay vast confusions involving hundreds of millions of human beings violently wrenched from their accustomed routines of faith and prayer, with potential effects beyond all calculation. Ahead lay--what?

"It may be glory and power, wealth past reckoning, incredible splendor," thought the Master, "and it may be ignominy, torture, death. 'Allah knows best and time will show.' But whatever it may be--is it completion? The human heart, alone--can that ever be complete in this world?"

He bent at the rail, gazing far out into the vague emptiness through which the air-liner was pus.h.i.+ng.

"Come what may," he murmured, "for tonight, at any rate, it is peace.

'It is peace, till the rising of the dawn!'"

In a strange mood, still holding no converse with any man, he returned to the main corridor and went toward his cabin. His way led past the door of "Captain Alden." There he paused a moment, all alone in the corridor. The lights in the ceiling showed a strange look in his eyes.

His face softened, as he laid a hand on the metal panels of the door, silently almost caressingly.

To himself he whispered:

"I wonder who she really is? What can her name be--who can she be, and--and--"

He checked himself, impatiently:

"What thoughts are these? What nonsense? Such things are not for me!"

Silently he returned to his cabin, undressed, switched off the light and turned into his berth, under which lay the incalculable treasures of Islam. For a long time he lay there, thinking, wondering, angry with himself for having seemed to give way for a single moment to softer thoughts than those of conquest and adventure.

Gradually the cradling swing, the quivering power of the airs.h.i.+p, lulled his fevered spirit. Sleep won upon him, dulled the excitements of the past twenty-four hours, sank him into oblivion. His deep, regular breathing sounded in the gloom of the cabin that contained the Great Pearl Star, the Myzab, the sacred Black Stone of infinite veneration.

An hour he slept. On, on roared _Nissr_, swaying, rising, falling a little as she hurled herself through the Arabian night toward the unknown Bara Jannati Shahr, hidden behind the Iron Mountains of mystery as yet unseen by any unbelieving eye.

Peace, all seemed peace, for one dark hour.

But as the hour ended, a shadow fell along the narrow gallery outside the cabin window. A silent shadow it was, that crept, paused, came on again. And now in the dark, had there been any eye to see, the shadow would have been identified as a barefoot man, lithe, alert, moving silently forward with the soundless stealth of an Arab versed in the art of _asar_, or man-stalking.

To the Master's window this shadow crept, a half-invisible thing in the gloom. It paused there, listening to the deep, regular breathing within. Then a lean, brown hand was laid on the sill. It still seemed to hesitate.

Something gleamed vaguely in that hand--a crooked _jambiyeh_, needle-sharp at the point, keen-edged and balanced for the stroke that silently slays.

Motionless, unbreathing even, the shadow waited a long minute. Then all at once over the sill it writhed, quick, lithe as a starved panther.

Dagger in hand, the shadow slid to the berth where lay the Master of the Legionaries. There Rrisa paused, listening to the slow respiration of the White Sheik with whom he had shared the inviolable salt, to whom he owed life itself.

Up, in the gloom, came the dagger-blade.

Over the unconscious Master it poised, keen, cold, avenging in the dark of the cabin where lay the three supreme treasures of all Islam.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

INTO THE VALLEY OF MYSTERY

The upraised blade, poised for swift murder, did not descend. With a groan from the heart's core, Rrisa let fall his trembling hand, as he recoiled toward the vague patch of starlight that marked the cabin window.

"_Bismillah_!" he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "I cannot! This is my sheik--'and thrice cursed is the hand that slays the sheik.' I cannot kill him!"

For a moment he remained there, pondering. Swift, pa.s.sionate thoughts surged through his brain, which burned with fever. In Rrisa's fighting-blood the supreme battle of his whole existence was aflame--duty of annihilating the violator of his Faith combating duty of loyalty absolute to one whose salt he had eaten, to one who had preserved his life.

So, in the dark he stood there, a shadow among shadows. He peered about with white-rimmed eyes, striving to discover where now the Myzab and the sacred Black Stone might be. The dim bulk of the blanket under the berth came to his senses. He knelt, touched the blanket, felt the hard solidity within.

Torn with anguish of a great conflict, he pondered, smearing the sweat of agony from his hard-wrinkled forehead. Better was it to fling these holy things from the cabin window, out into the night? Better the certainty that the desert sands, far below, would inevitably drift over them, forever burying them from the sight of his people; or better the chance that the Master, after all, really intended to deliver them back into Moslem hands at Bara Jannati Shahr?

"Allah, oh, guide thy servant now!" the orderly prayed with trembling lips. "Allah, show thou me the way!"

The Master, stirring in his sleep, sighed deeply and let his right hand fall outside the berth. Rrisa, fearful of imminent discovery, made up his mind with simple directness. He salaamed in silence, all but brus.h.i.+ng the Master's hand with his lips.

"_Wa'salem!_" (Farewell!) he breathed. Then he got up, turned, laid his dagger on the table and slid out through the window as soundlessly as he had come. He crossed the marrow gallery in the gloom, and mounted the rail beyond which yawned black vacancy.

For a moment he stayed there, peering down first at the impenetrable abysses below, then up at the unmoved stars above. The ghostly aura of light in the gallery showed his face wan, deep-graven with lines, agonized, enn.o.bled by strong decisions of self-sacrifice.

"Thou, Allah," he whispered, "dost know life cannot be for both my Master and thy servant, after what thy servant hath seen. I offer thee my life for his! Thou wilt judge aright, for thou knowest the hearts of men and wilt wrong no man by the weight of a grain of sand. Thou art easy to be reconciled, and merciful! There is no G.o.d but Allah, and M'hamed is his Prophet!"

With no further word, he leaped.

Just a fraction of a second, a dim-whirling object plummeted into s.p.a.ce. It vanished.

As best he understood, Rrisa had solved his problem and had paid his score.

The Master wakened early, with the late May sun already Slanting in from far, dun and orange desert-levels, gilding the metal walls of his cabin. For a few moments he lay there, half dreamily listening to the deep ba.s.s hum of the propellers, the slight give and play of the air-liner as she shuddered under the powerful drive of her Norcross-Brail engines.